


The Things We Do in the Dark

by FireflySong



Series: Pride Month Writing Prompt Challenge 2020 [5]
Category: Until Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Blizzards & Snowstorms, F/M, Gen, Humor, Power Outage, i say graphic violence but its just a paragraph badly explaining a mortal kombat fatality, ive never even played it, just only mentioned though, one day i will have a story where they have lines, the chrashley is like super minor im just trash for it, the twins are technically in it, this is not that story, why did i add the mortal kombat?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-06
Updated: 2020-06-06
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:22:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24568423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FireflySong/pseuds/FireflySong
Summary: Josh had expected a night at the lodge playing video games with his friends while his sisters and Sam hung out upstairs. But then his parents left for town, Ash is doing homework, and then the power goes out. Not exactly how he expected the night to go, but he'll make do.Written for Day 5: Storm of the Pride Month Writing Prompt Challenge over on tumblr.
Relationships: Ashley Brown & Chris Hartley & Josh Washington, Ashley Brown/Chris Hartley, Sam Giddings & Josh Washington
Series: Pride Month Writing Prompt Challenge 2020 [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1770988
Comments: 4
Kudos: 10





	The Things We Do in the Dark

**Author's Note:**

> hey i'm still keeping up with these, what the hell?! and in a complete departure from the full angst from emily for day one, here's some humor and friendship from josh for day five.
> 
> you can find me on tumblr at love-fireflysong if you feel so inclined!

“I seriously cannot believe that you’re doing homework right now.”

The wind howled outside as Josh lounged on one of the couches in the main room of the lodge, PlayStation controller in hand as he just stared disappointed in the direction of Ashley. Who, true to his word, was currently working on what looked like her English homework at the coffee table.

“I mean, c’mon Ash, it’s our February break! I was nice enough to invite you and Chris up my swanky family lodge—” the sound of the a deep voice interrupted him with a cry of ‘Finish him!” and he returned his attention to the TV with a cry of horror. Just in time to watch as Chris’s character called up a double and both grabbed on to Freddy Krueger’s legs and pulled. The lodge now filled with the sounds of a bones cracking and breaking as the body was methodically ripped in half with a shower of blood. Chris had the gall to actually _snicker_ from where he was sitting next to Ash on the couch. It wasn’t nearly enough to cover the taunting ‘Noob Saibot wins. FATALITY!’. “What the hell, Cochise? That wasn’t fair!”

Chris shrugged as Ash shook her head in exasperation and a vague expression of disgust. “Not my problem, man. Should have been playing closer attention to the game. All’s fair in love and war.”

“Love my ass! You cheated. There was no way that Noob could ever beat Freddy in a fair fight and you know it! I demand a rematch! But first,” Josh turned his attention back to Ashley. “Do you have any idea of the things I had to promise Beth in order to convince her to give me her friend invite? I have to be her personal chauffeur for the next _month_ and this is how you repay me? By doing _homework?_ ”

“This report is due next week, Josh! You may be able to not care about any of that, but I certainly do. I can’t afford to fall behind!” Ash made a wide sweeping arc with her hand, Chris frantically grabbing at the pen clenched within before she almost stabbed Josh in the eye with the end of it. “Wait. What do you mean you had to beg Beth?”

“Parents only allowed each of us a single plus one. Not important.”

Chris took over for Josh, almost like they had planned it. “Exactly. What _is_ important is the fact that there is no way you can fall behind from being late on a single book report. What, you scared you’re 4.0 is going to drop into a terrifying 3.9?”

She shoved at Chris and tried to steal her pen back, but he was holding behind him out of her reach. “Not funny Chris. Only reason I was allowed to come was if I promised to finish all of my work before we got back.” The two of them began to play an entirely childish game of keep away with the pen, Chris appearing to lower his guard before yanking his hand away just out of reach and Ash scowled as she started to practically climb over him. “Seriously Chris, give me back my pen.”

“You’re gonna have to take it from me Ash.”

“Oh my god, what are you? Five?”

“I know you are, but what am I?”

Next to the both of them, Josh debated on giving Chris a hand for roughly five seconds before turning back to the game, intent on giving him a taste of his own medicine. Maybe with the boiler? He wasn’t sure yet, the pit of hell was always a goodie after all. He would unfortunately never be able to find out what his choice would have been though, as with a loud bang from outside, the electricity went out and entire lodge was cast into darkness.

There was two shouts and a scream from the couch (and no, Josh was definitely _not_ the one scream, no matter what Chris and Ash would claim later) and Josh frantically dived to the coffee table in front of him. Blindly, he smacked his hand around on the tabletop until he finally found the familiar rectangular shape of his cellphone. Sighing in relief, he turned on the flashlight function and moved the beam towards the others.

“Alright, I think that the wind may have blown out one of the power lines nearby and—” he paused a moment to simply take in the image in front of him. It seemed that in response to the sudden outage. Chris and Ash had grabbed at each other in surprise. Except since they had been fighting only seconds before, she had ended up straddling his lap with her arms around his neck, while he had his arms wrapped quite firmly around his waist. If there had been any space between them, it was purely microscopic. “Well, if I knew that a simple power outage would be enough to finally drive you into each other’s arms, I would have done this ages ago.”

With the phone quite literally casting light on their situation, the both of them seemed to realize their position and they frantically began to push away from the other with apologies and burning faces. Except in their struggle to try and untangle themselves, they both managed to fall off the couch with a surprised yelp, thankfully missing the coffee table in doing so.

“Well, I’m going to go and check on the girls, make sure that they’re alright. Once you two lovebirds figure yourselves out, try to find some candles or flashlights or something.” With that, Josh stood up among the embarrassed stammering's and frantic fumbling and walked towards the stairs. He stopped, and turned his head to yell over his shoulder, “Oh and try to find something to start a fire with, and some blankets. There should be some in the linen closet by the storage room. With the power out, the heats gonna be out as well.”

He walked up the stairs, catching the way the both of them practically bolted in opposite directions of the other with an unrestrained snort. And ran into Sam once he reached the top of the stairs on his way to Hannah’s room where he had last seen the blonde and his sisters. Though he squinted painfully at the light from her own phone’s flashlight shining directly into his eyes.

“Jesus Christ Sam, lower that a little will you? I think one half-blind Washington is more than enough for this family thank you very much.”

“Josh? Oh, right. Sorry.” Dutifully, Sam lowered the beam coming from her phone. “Is everything okay? I heard a scream coming from downstairs.”

“Hmm? Oh, yeah, that was just Ash.” Josh shrugged nonchalantly. “You know her, easily spooked and all that.”

“Uh huh.” Sam said slowly with disbelief and looked over his shoulder, and seemed surprised to not see anyone behind him. “And where are Chris and Ashley now?”

“Well it’s quite simple. You see, in the darkness they flew into the other’s arms and got so caught up in each other that they fell off the couch.”

“Uh huh,” Sam repeated again, with impossibly even more disbelief. “Sure. Whatever you say Josh.”

“Sammy, is that disbelief I hear in your voice?” Josh placed his unoccupied hand onto his chest scandalized. “I swear to you on my third aunt four times removed grave—bless good old Aunt Prudence’s soul—that every word I have just said is one hundred percent true.”

Sam rolled her eyes but even in the low light from his phone, he caught the growing smile on her face. “Okay, okay. I get it. What are you doing up here anyway?”

“Just came to check on you and my sisters. Make sure that Beth didn’t strangle one of you in fear, really.”

“Well you’re not wrong about that. I just managed to pry her off of Hannah before I ran into you. Though I think it was the blood-curdling scream from downstairs that got her if you ask me.” Sam turned to stare out one of the windows nearby on the second floor and frowned. “Jesus, that blizzard really came out of nowhere didn’t it? Did your parents make it back from town yet?”

Josh looked over her shoulder and was surprised to see nothing but a thick sheet of white blocking his vision from seeing more then a foot out of the window. “No, not yet. They’re probably just gonna spend the night at a hotel or something until the storm clears up enough for them to make it back up here.” He turned to look back at Sam. “Speaking of, I think that there’s a couple of flashlights or something up here. I think they’re further down the hall towards Hannah’s room. I’ll help you look for them, but then I should probably get back downstairs. Make sure that Chris and Ash haven't managed to knock themselves out by walking into a door or table in the dark.”

"They’re not really the most graceful of people are they?”

Josh sighed wistfully as he once again placed a hand over his chest, this time in extreme fondness. “Bless their dorky little hearts, but they are as awkward and clumsy as a newborn deer.”

“Well, lead on then. Bring me to these rumored flashlights oh great and all knowing one.”

With that, Josh spent the next several minutes with Sam helping her to locate and bring back the flashlights and extra blankets when they managed to find them. After confirming that his sisters were fine, if not a little annoyed that their brother had thought the need to check up on them, he recommended that the three of them sleep in one of the guest room’s on the main floor, as it was the only bedroom other than their parents’ that had a fireplace. He then had to spend another couple of minutes reassuring them that he would be fine, he would just spend the night sleeping in front of the fireplace in the main room with Chris and Ash. Then, and only then, was he was finally able to go back downstairs to confirm that neither of his best friends had managed to lose a limb by running into the sharp corner of a table. Only to stop at the bottom of the stairs and raised his eyebrows.

“Wow, I know that both of you have a weird idea of romance, but I think doing homework by candlelight is a little nerdy even for you two.”

Chris turned from where he was trying, and failing fantastically, to light a fire in the fireplace. “I told her that she was insane for doing it, but she refused to believe me.”

Ash turned to look at the both of them, eyes catching first on Chris before moving to Josh on the other side of the room. “I meant what I said earlier, I really need to get this report done.”

Josh groaned as he went to go over and help Chris out with the fire. “And I meant what I said too: we are _vacationing_ in a _ski lodge_ and you are doing your _homework_. You are a killjoy of the highest degree.” He and Chris fumbled with the fireplace for another few seconds and gave a shout in victory when a flame finally managed to catch onto the dry timber and newspapers.

Walking over to Ashley, he noted the quite frankly insane amount of blankets that covered nearly every surface of the couch and the pile on the floor. While he was relieved that they, or more likely Ashley, had figured out his plans, had they they looted every single bedroom in the lodge or something? He hadn’t even been aware that there were this many blankets in the building to begin with. 

He sat down next to Ash on the floor, Chris not far behind, and began to take away her papers, making sure that they were well away from candle flames. As much as he joked about getting rid of it sometimes, he didn’t actually want to burn any of it.

“What the—? Josh!”

“Ash. Ashley. Ash-oh-ley Bu-row-nuh. Let’s be honest here. Your kids are already gonna be getting terrible genes in the eyesight department, we don’t need to add yours to the mix.” Ash's face colored a bit, but she let him remove and give the papers to Chris who carefully tucked them away.

“Now that that’s dealt with, you know what’s just the thing to do on a dark, stormy night when the power’s out?” Josh grabbed a flashlight from off the table and flicked it on, making sure that his face was cast in shadow from the beam of light, and gave a wide, toothy grin. “Scary stories.”

Honestly, the two pillows that came from either side to hit him in the head was just rude.


End file.
